Hero's Mount Part 1

"Onii-chan, it hurts..."

Kilian stood, dead silent, looking at Klara. Klara was in a pool of blood on the ground, both of her legs severed from her body.

"Onii-chan, help..."

Kilian bent down and picked Klara up. He expected tears to form, but none did. He stared at his sister's legs covered in blood.

"Onii-chan, sing me that song mama used to sing..."

Kilian closes his eyes. He knew he had to do it. He brought Klara's face closer to his.

"Onii-chan, I love you..."

He bent down to kiss her. Klara closed her eyes. But no- he kept going down. Towards her neck. He bit down into her neck with his fangs. Blood flowed down her body as she moaned softly.

"Don't worry, Klara. You'll be okay."

When Klara came to, she was surrounded by corpses of the Dijklandese royals. Kilian was behind her.

"Did you do this, Onii-chan?"

"I had to kill them to protect you."

"I see."

"Their armies are gonna come for us and probably will destroy the castle. We must leave now if we wanna live."

Klara looked around the castle in which she was born and raised. Memories surrounding the place played in her head in a loop. One thing was for sure; she would never see this place again. She looked down at her legs... Wait. Legs? She was sure she had lost them in the brawl. Then how did she have legs?

"Onii-chan, what did you do to me?"

"I made you a vampire."

"You were a vampire this whole time?"

"Yes."

"And you fought against your own kind in the war?"

"I was a spy sent here to weaken humanity's defenses. I failed my job."

"Why are you saying this to me now?"

"Because... I don't know how much more time I have with you."

Finally, the tears came out of Kilian's eyes. He sat down on the ground with a thud. Klara continued to question him.

"Onii-chan... Earlier you said I wasn't human... Doesn't that mean I was a vampire already? Why did you have to turn me into one?"

"..."

"Onii-chan, answer me... Please..."

Klara started to sob loudly, tears streaming down her eyes. All this time, everything she had known had been one big, fat, lie. Her family was in ruins. Her own brother was a vampire. And so was she. Her older sister Charlotte was probably dead... Or was she? Klara stopped crying. If vampires were so important a matter to the Dijklanders, they wouldn't kill them. They probably would keep them alive to experiment on them. Charlotte might still be alive. Since her brother was on the vampire's side, Klara was gonna take matters into her own hands. She got up and started walking away.

"Where are you going, Klara?"

"To save Charlotte. I don't care if you try to stop me. I will save her."

"I'm not gonna stop you. But there's something I need to tell you before you go."

Klara stopped in her tracks.

"What is it?"

"I'm not your brother."

Klara turned behind. Kilian lifted off his clothes... to reveal a female body, with breasts and a female reproductive organ. He was a she. Klara was silent in shock.

"You're a woman?"

"Yes, Klara. And my name isn't Kilian. I am Hannah the Third, the descendent of Hannah the Second, and I am a vampire overlord. I've been one for 1200 years if my counting is correct. I was banished from my land after a coup d'etat by the vampire army removed me from my post. I was forced to join the humans as a spy after they threatened to kill my family. I don't know if they're alive or not."

Klara stood there silently. Her brother who she had loved all her life, was a 1200-year-old female vampire overlord. While she was processing this information, she felt a sudden heat in her system. It felt like a sudden surge of energy.

"Klara, do you feel that?"

"W-what is this feeling?"

"It's our energy sources. They've synergized. Strange, this is usually a sign of compatibility in us vampires."

"Energy sources?"

"Every vampire has an energy source at its core. It's the reason for our immortality. This is what they were researching in their Artificial vampire experiment."

"And ours are synergized?"

"Yes, that's peculiar."

"Onii-chan, what am I?"

Klara looked at her hands. She was no longer human. She would never be human ever again. She was a vampire.

"Since it's all out now, I think I can tell you. Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, Onii-chan, please tell me."

Hannah, slowly putting on her clothes, sighed and began her story.

-15 YEARS AGO-

-DAY ONE-

On the same hill Hannah and Klara were on, there once stood a church. It was a magnificent cathedral, whose spires reached towards the heavens. Inside the church were 11 human soldiers surrounded by vampire legions approaching on all sides of the hill. One of them was a Legendary Class Hero who was famous for defeating several vampire kings. Nobody knew the Hero's true identity, for the Hero was clad in a set of yellow and blue armor all the time. A running gag among the soldiers who worked with her was that she would even attend to nature's calling inside the armor. They knew she was a she and not a he because of her smooth feminine voice.

The Hero sat on a rock overlooking a lake next to the church. In the far distance, she could barely make out the armies approaching at a slow pace. Her soldiers, oddly enough, were merrymaking at this time, drinking and singing. They knew death was coming and had simply accepted it. The Hero still hadn't, though. She was trying her best to find a way so all of them could survive. One of the soldiers, a lad called Kishibe, approached her holding a pint of beer.

"C'mon, Ma'am, have a drink with us," he said.

The Hero looked him in the eye and he instantly knew what she was going to ask.

"How far away are they?"

Kishibe looked at the armies approaching. "I'd say 3 days away, Ma'am," he said with a sigh.

"What about the armies on the other side of the hill?"

"Well, they're a good week away at least. Our death isn't coming from there."

"I see. Round up the men, Kishibe. I've got a plan.

Kishibe followed, and soon the 10 men were assembled in front of the Hero. The Hero dusted off her armor before speaking.

"Soldiers. Are you afraid of dying?"

The soldiers shook their heads in denial, and the Hero continued to speak.

"How many cannons do we have, Kishibe?"

Kishibe spoke up. "We have 15, ma'am."

"And rounds?"

"We have 2 left, ma'am."

The Hero took in a deep breath as she thought. There must be some way- some solution for the soldiers to survive. Then it hit her.

"Kishibe. The hill we're standing on. I remember it had caves at its base."

"Oh, those? Those are granite mines, ma'am. They were used centuries ago and have been long abandoned."

"Granite... Wait. Granite! Kishibe, do you still have our tools from our last skirmish?"

'I think we have some left, ma'am. But why do we need them?"

"We're gonna make our own mortars. From granite."

-DAY TWO-

The men were hard at work in the mines, mining and shaping stone and granite to make mortars. They spent all night clearing up just a small deposit, and most of them were half-dead. The maddening grind of hitting rocks was slowly driving them to insanity. It was grueling work, but every time a pickaxe struck the hard rock, the Hero's words from earlier echoed in their heads.

"Just now, you were enjoying yourselves, not caring about the fact that in three days you'd be dead. You might not care, but for your sons; and the people of this country. When they see your graves, they'd be reminded of what a useless little coward you were. You gave your life not for the country, but because you gave up like a coward after not being able to face the opposing enemy forces heading your way. I feel disgraced having all of you as my soldiers, but for now, that's what I got. You're weak, but that doesn't mean you can give up. You gotta fight. Even if it means you'll die."

Kishibe spoke up right then. "We- are not scared of death. We've accepted it. At least let us go peacefully..."

"Whoever kills the most enemy soldiers gets to spend a night with me."

The men worked their lives out after that. Kishibe screamed as he hit the rocks with all his strength. He would kill the most enemy soldiers, even if it killed him. By the evening of that day, they had readied the mortars and had set up the cannons. According to the Hero's plan, 5 soldiers would operate the cannons on top of the hill, and another 5, including her, would be at the base of the hill keeping out enemy soldiers through the thickly forested terrain.

-DAY THREE-

The vampire army leader, Kong Tenze the Third was on horseback approaching the hill. He was dressed in a sunlight-resistant suit of armor, along with his army. He had 3000 men in his army, with reinforcements coming from the other direction. There was no way the humans would win this battle. They were surrounded and outnumbered by an extreme degree.

He looked up the hill, which was right in front of him. It seemed unusually silent from this distance. Silence. And then he heard it. The sound of a cannon going off. A cloud of dirt suddenly appeared, blocking his vision. They weren't aiming for his soldiers; they were aiming in front of them to block their vision.

"HALT!" He screamed.

Most soldiers halted, but some of them kept going beyond the smoke cloud. After they went, he could barely make out their bodies being blasted by the cannons, blood spilling everywhere.

"I SAID HALT!"

There was silence. In the thick smoke, he saw the silhouettes of dead people and horses. And then boom. Another cannon went off. The person next to Kong was blasted off, his horse dismembered. As the blood of his ally spilled on his face, Kong felt an overwhelming emotion within. Rage.

"SOLDIERS, CHARGE!"